- Many people think Excel is only good for analyzing datausing formulas, charts and so on.That is certainly what Excel is best atbut you can also add shapes, text boxesand other graphics to convey informationand make your worksheets more visually appealing.In this movie, I will show you how to add shapesto a workbook.If you want to add a shape to a worksheet,you go to the Insert tab on the ribbonand then about a quarter of the way over,you will see the Shapes control.

Click that control and you can see a galleryof the shapes that you can add.You have lines, rectangles, a variety of basic shapes.And you can also scroll down into the galleryso you can see everything that is available to you.If you work in business process analysis,then you might find the flowchart sectionespecially helpful.But let us stay simple.I'll scroll back up and let us saythat I want to add a rectangle with rounded corners.So I will click it from the gallery while it is highlightedand then in the body of the worksheet,you can see that my mouse pointer has changedto a thin crosshair.

All I need to do is click and dragto define the size of the shape that I am adding,and you can see it here.After I release the left mouse button,the shape format contextual tab appears on the ribbon.And there are quite a few things that I can do.For example, I can apply a preset format.The default is the blue with a little bit of shading,but if I want I can hover the mouse pointerover the in-ribbon gallery and click the expand buttonand I get a list of all of the other built-in formatsthat I can use.

So if I want to apply one of those,such as going with a shaded black,then I can select it from the gallery and it is applied.I can also change specific elements.For example, not applying a preset formatbut changing the fill or the outline.To do that, I can click the Shape Fill button's down arrowand I see a palette of the colors that I can use.Let's say that I want to go for a dark forest green,I'll click that and you can see it applied.

I can also change the outline,that is currently a black line.If I click the down arrow,I can apply another color.And just for contrast, let us say that I doa dark purple.You can see that changed there.I could also, if I want, change the weight of the line.This is its thickness, so I clickedthe same down arrow I clicked a moment ago,and I will change it to 3pt so it's significantly thicker.I can also add effects to the shape.If I click the Shape Effects button,I can apply a shadow, reflection, glow,make the edges soft.

Let's say that I want to add a shadow.I have an outer shadow that is offset to the bottom.And if I click away from the shape,you can see that the shadow appeared.If I want to add text to a shape, all I need to dois click the shape and start typing.So in this case, I will type in Room Report.You can see that when I have this background color in place,the text is white by default.If I want to change that color, say, for example,to make it a little bit lighter gray,I can select the text and then clickthe Text Fill button's down arrowand let's say that I make it a light gray.

Click away, and you can see what that looks like now.If I want to center text within a particular shape,I can click the shape then go to the Home tab of the ribbonand use the standard paragraph formatting controlsto change it.So if I want to center the text horizontally,I can click the Center Text button.And if I want to center it vertically,I can go up and click the Middle Align button.And doing so moves the text to the middleand to the center of the shape.

If I want to move the shape on the worksheet,I can hover the mouse pointer over it.And when the mouse pointer changesto a multidirectional arrow, as you see here,I can drag the shape to a new position.A tooltip appears indicating how far I have moved it.If I want to resize the shape,I can grab any of the handles around the cornersor on the edges.So if I want to make it wider, I can dragfrom either the left or the right.I can do the same thing to make it narrower.I can make it taller or shorterby dragging the handles on the top.

And if I want to change it both in height and width,I can grab and drag one of the corners, like so.And finally, to rotate, I can click the shapeand go up to Shape Format, click the Rotate buttonand here I have a number of options,rotating right 90° like that,and I can also go left, flip it horizontallyor flip it vertically.If you want to free rotate the shape,grab at this handle here, it has a clockwisepointing circular arrow, and once you grab that,you can rotate it and again, a tooltip appearsindicating how far you have rotated it.

And if I take it all the way up to the top,you can see that it is currently at 0°,which means that it is in its unrotated original shape.When you create a worksheet that requires data entry,you can use shapes that contain textto provide instructions for anyone who uses the worksheet.Excel is best suited for data analysis,but adding a few well-placed shapes with textcan make the process easier.

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Released

3/9/2018

Learn everything you need to master the world's most popular spreadsheet program—now accessible from anywhere with an Office 365 subscription. Curt Frye provides a comprehensive overview of Excel for Mac, including manipulating workbook and cell data, using functions, printing worksheets, and collaborating with others. In the last half of the course, he covers more complex techniques, such as summarizing data with charts, working with external data, adding images and shapes, and automating routine tasks.